Wednesday, May 28, 2008

NCAA Releases Figures on Salary Disparities in Coaching

USA Today reported last week that 2006 salary statistics recently released by the NCAA confirms that people men who coach men's sports earn more than people who coach women's sports. And among schools with big time football programs, they earn way more. The average salary for a Division I-A women's lacrosse head coach is $80,200, while head coaches of men's lacrosse in that same subdivision earn, on average, more than twice that amount -- $165,400. The gender gap was less pronounced among non-BCS subdivision Division I schools ($69,400 to $55,900 in DI-AA and $64,000 to $53,000 in Division I-AAA) but significant nonetheless.

The sidebar graphic itemized average salaries in other sports as well:

Sport

Men

Women

Gymnastics

$107,400

$91,700

Soccer

$93,900

$90,700

Tennis

$87,200

$71,300

Track

$62,100

$63,600

One explanation for the higher salaries among men's lacrosse coaches is the larger roster size for men's lacrosse teams. In fact, salary differentials are not unlawful if they are based on nondiscriminatory factors such as squad size. Yet it is clear that there is more than squad size driving up the relative salaries for men's lacrosse coaches. Because if the size of the salary was tightly correlated to the size of the team, we would see women's track coaches outearning men's track coaches by a similar order of magnitude (instead of only ~2% more). It's likely that other factors are entering into the equation, and it's hard to ignore the likelihood that sexist assumptions about the relative value of men's sports is coming into play.